JOAN GRIMALT

MAPPING MUSICAL SIGNIFICATION

JOAN GRIMALT

Escola superior de música de Catalunya jgrimalt@esmuc.cat

Is it possible to systematize the main questions and typologies of musical signification in a clear, pragmatic way that encourages students and colleagues to use this methodology? Musical signification is an emerging field, but it is already bearing some solid results. The trouble is, they are mostly scattered around, in books and articles that are not always easily accessible.

My students kept asking for some order to my hermeneutic observations, hence the title Mapping Musical Signification (Springer 2020). Its aim is to help orient all those who wish to include expressive meanings into their analysis, their teaching, and their performances. The methodology follows pragmatic criteria and avoids purely theoretical discussion. The book’s table of contents reflects all tools that have been useful to me, whether as a performer or as a teacher, to give some solid ground – or to dement – my intuitions about musical meaning. It uses semiotic tools such as sign, trope, isotopy, and the old tried-and-tested semiotic square. It also relies heavily on the so-called topic theory and some of the new theories on musical narrativity, but it adapts all these utensils to the practical terrains of musical performance and teaching.

Beyond all systematizing efforts, the ultimate goal is to regain music as a significative artifact, and thus to reincorporate it into the humanities, where it traditionally belongs. Twentieth-century formalism brought academic isolation to art music. The music world can find its way back to its contemporary audience through an extra effort in putting words to the ineffable, finally unexplainable music experience.

Keywords: musical signification, teaching, taxonomy, topic theory, exploration.

Joan Grimalt is a conductor, philologist, and PhD in musicology who wrote his thesis on Gustav Mahler. After a decade devoted exclusively to performing, especially as an opera conductor, he combines practical musicianship with teaching and research at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya. Joan’s main field of research is musical signification, especially those regions on the edge of literature and language: hermeneutic, rhetoric, and poetic meters. The intersection between musicological reflection and performance has also been a constant point of interest. In June 2022, he will be the local organizer of the last of the International Congresses on Musical Signification n. XV. In his last book, Mapping Musical Signification (Springer), Joan gathers his and his colleagues’ research in a systematic textbook.